


Atropos Alley

by Cluegirl



Series: The Moirae Set [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:30:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry's had a hard day, and goes to talk to his mum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atropos Alley

The wind was even colder just off the river, but as Harry'd expected, the weather had driven all sensible folk inside for the night, so there was nobody to notice when he cast a heating charm that made the old swingset glow faintly in the sodium vapour gloom.

"Hullo Mum," he said, pausing to check his mending charms at the swingset's joints before settling carefully into the left hand swing. It was a tight fit, but Harry was slight enough he'd not had to transfigure it larger. One of the few bright spots to his short stature, he supposed with a laugh. It might make Aurors, dark wizards and Ministry officials tend to look down on him (literally,) but at least he could fill a pre-teen's seat comfortably. "Sorry I've not been to visit lately. Work, you know? Been a bit mad since we caught Alex Foyle and his gang. Half the Bureau of Muggle Affairs was in his pocket, and it's been a right chore working out which ones knew it at the time."

Harry shook his head, rubbed a hand through his hair as the spell warmth seeped into his chilled, tense muscles. The swing sat too low to the ground for him to do more than nudge it slowly back and forth, but the gentle rocking motion made it easier for him to carry on talking -- to imagine an understanding, loving presence at his side, who would listen without judging, without advising, without criticizing, without blaming.

"They were selling potions to muggle drug dealers, mum," he went on, shaking his head. "As if the normal drugs weren't bad enough. This stuff would get them high enough, but if it found any scrap of magic in them, even so much as a squib has, it just..." he waved a hand vaguely in the air, as if he could dispell the memories of the crime scenes as easily as the steam of his breath. "It blew their magical core wide open. Fifty people went mad before it even was properly reported as a magical attack. Near a hundred before we could track Foyle down and capture his lab. They'll never recover, the poor bastards."

He lay his forehead against the creaking swing chain, finding the metal's icy burn a comforting counterpoint to the angry, guilty ache inside him. He couldn't save everyone, he knew, but sometimes it all seemed like such a bloody _waste_!

Back and forth, he rocked, toe dug into the grimy snow, to push against the frozen earth beneath it. The wind pushed through the hedges, set the swing beside him swaying too. "You know what Foyle said when I asked him why?" Harry asked the imaginary presence. "He called it 'housekeeping'. Said if he could sort out a few mudbloods before they shoved in where they weren't wanted, then so much the better. After everything I… we… After… he wasn’t even a Death Eater, Mum! He was just… just…" Harry had to stop. The words crowded too thick, to jagged in his throat, and the icy Yorkish air wouldn’t let them scrape out.

He took a deep breath, and shook his head. He hadn’t come here for this. Hadn’t come here to cry to his mum because his job was hard and people were rotten. Not really. He pushed his hand into his pocket, found the little twist of paper there, and pulled it out.

“I’ve brought you something,” he told her, watching the low pine branches sweeping back and forth along the riverbank’s grimy snow. “I’d meant to give it to Ginny when I bought it, but… Well, she didn’t want it.” Harry stopped, and made himself say it correctly. He owed his mum that much honesty, after all. “I asked her if she wanted to marry me, and she said no.” He unscrewed the wadded wrapping paper from around the band, and watched it glimmer in the sodium vapour light. “Thing is… I wasn’t all that surprised when she said it. Not that I expected her to say no or anything, but just… it was a bit of a shock how it wasn’t really much of a shock, you know? I can’t help feeling I ought to be more… something over it. Hurt, angry, depressed… something. But really, I just felt…” He sighed, looked up at the clouds. “Relieved.”

“So it’s probably for the best she said no, right?”

Wasn’t it? He didn’t know, but for just now, he figured it was best that he let himself believe it was. If nothing else, now he’d have time to work out just _why_ his heart hadn’t broken when his red haired girl had told him no and walked away.

The wind gusted around him, rattling the trees, shaking the chains of the empty swings, and shoving the tottering little roundabout into a shrill squeak. The idling, empty noises set Harry’s nerves on edge, made him imagine a watcher, eavesdropping unseen on his confession.

And that was just not on. His home, his work, his schooling, his love life, even his friendships, he could find a way to share with the world, but these talks with his mum were the only thing Harry had for himself alone. A quick look around yielded nothing, and the dim streetlight was too dodgy for Harry to be sure he’d go unseen if he pulled out his wand to cast a detection spell.

He stood up, loath to leave his pocket of warmed air under the swingset arch, but less willing to be spied out, and he shook his filmy cloak out of his jacket pocket, where he’d made a habit of carrying it. He idled his way around the tall pine tree, as though he meant to have a smoke, then pitch the fag end into the river. Then once he’d put the old tree’s shaggy drape between himself and the playground, Harry pulled his cloak right over his head, and ducked through the branches.

The resinous gloom gathered him in like a hug, needles crunching muffled under his feet, branches tickling his hair like a caressing hand that knew him well as he made his way toward the thick center bole.

There, he knelt and added the ring, its sapphire black now that there was no orange muggle light to waken it, to the shrine. He propped it on a carved plaque of gilded wood between two velvet covered boxes, just before the torn photo of his father and he and the tiny little infant’s broom. He didn’t have a candle to light, but there’d been a lager bottle in the playground, and a couple wand-taps had turned that into a clear bell jar, with blueberry flames within it tickling the darkness a few feet back.

The cool light made the sapphire ring just blaze, and Harry gave the growing arrangement a smile. “Anyway. We’re not dating anymore. She said she’s not up to it right now, with everything that’s happened, and she didn’t like the idea of me waiting around for her either. So I’m officially a bachelor again. Only let’s not tell Witch Weekly about that, all right?”

He didn’t think about what he was going to do later that night, didn’t let himself think about the frustrations and discouragements of his work, didn’t let the loneliness follow him into the peaceful presence of the love that had kept him alive so very long. He’d have time enough to think about all of that later. Ten, maybe midnight, or later, when nobody would come asking after him, then Harry would give himself the catharsis his bones had been aching for all week… since Ginny had chosen, since Foyle had spewed out his bile across the interrogation table.

For now, though, he’d come to see his Mum in the only place he could think of that was truly his. She wouldn’t want to know about later. She wouldn’t want to know what it sometimes took for Harry to sleep through the night, and above all else, Harry did not want to make his mum sad.

“Love you, mum,” he said, and as always, fancied that she could hear him.


End file.
